No Sympathy for Trump Supporters Who Express Regret

Poor Helen Beristain! She voted for Donald Trump. But now her undocumented husband has been deported to Mexico by Trump. Now she cries tears heavy with a Jack Daniels' sadness, a sadness most wives would prefer not to drink.

She thought Trump would deport only people with criminal records—the “bad hombres,” as her fuhrer called them. “I don't think ICE is out there to detain anyone and break families, no,” Beristain told CNN affiliate WSBT in March 2017, shortly after her husband, Roberto Beristain, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Trump deported the 44-year-old Mishawaka, Indiana, resident, despite Beristain not having a criminal record, says family attorney Adam Ansari. “He hadn't committed any crimes. He didn't even have a parking ticket. From everyone's accounts, he is probably one of the most lovable guys you will ever meet. He is a loving husband and father. And he put a lot of work into his restaurant.”

Yet, ironically, in an interview with the South Bend (Indiana) Tribune, Helen recalled her husband saying, “He's going to get rid of the Mexicans.” And that’s when she reminded him that Trump was only going to get rid of the “bad hombres.”

In 2014, Kraig Moss found his son, Rob, dead in his bed from a heroin overdose. Rob was 24 years old. In 2016, Moss sold the equipment for his upstate New York construction business, stopped making mortgage payments on his house and began following Trump on the campaign trail like a jockey in pursuit of a horse.

He sang pro-Trump country songs while strumming a guitar emblazoned with Trump campaign stickers, earning him the nick name “Trump Troubadour.” But now, after the election, Moss refuses to play the guitar with the Trump decorations. He has soured on Mr. Pompous Liar because of the Republican American Health Care Act that failed to pass Congress in March 2017.

That legislation, which Trump supported, would have resulted in dramatic cuts in addiction treatment services. “The bill is an absolute betrayal of what Trump represented on the campaign trail,” Moss has explained. “I feel betrayed.” Yet, this is the same man who, in 2016, said “I truly believe from the heart that [Trump] is going to do everything he can. He’s going to create treatment centers for the kids.”

The Question: Sympathy?
Given their change of heart regarding Trump, how should a reasonable person react to Beristain and Moss’s expressions of regret? How should caring, understanding and kindhearted people respond to their remorse? Should they sympathize and accept, or should they pour stale, spoiled Italian dressing on their salad of agonizing lament?

With the hypocrisy that is America, it is easier to preach we should sympathize with them than to stare into the face of an ugly, squid-faced reality: They campaigned for and voted for a sexual pervert, a pathological liar, a diabolical racist, a corrupt demagogue and an unqualified, incompetent clown.

Were they aware of these traits in this octopus of evil? Subconsciously, of course; consciously, you bet. So why would we sympathize with those who voted for him, yet now suffer because of him?

Why should we sympathize with those who now suffer from Trump's abuse of compassion and human rights and the starving tongue of watery-eyed kindness?

Reasons: Against Sympathy
Regret is wonderful, as long as he doesn’t throw acid on the beauty of sympathy. Remorse is adorable, when she rushes, like a trembling sister, to embrace sympathy. And lament may be truly sorrowful, but her tears do not necessarily warrant the sympathy of sympathy.

At best, they may occasion our condolence, but not our sympathy. At worst, they may wring from our lips words of warmth and syllables of consolation.

But sympathy requires a harmony of feelings, such that when people of opposite opinions face similar adversities, they share the hope that their regrets are as strongly possible for the future as they prevail in the present.

And this ability to sympathize is not fickle. It is a spiritual journey, like the leaves of a cypress tree—tender while forming, lovely while growing, gracious as they flutter amid warm winds. It is the journal of a compassionate life.

But who can trust a right-winger—that is, someone who once voted for the Darth Vader of the Republican Party—not to support such racists in the near future? Who can believe, for example, that the racist rock- and country-music singer Ted Nugent is serious when he says “I encourage even my friends [and] enemies on the left, in the Democrat and liberal world, that we have got to be civil to each other. … I’m not going to engage in that kind of hateful rhetoric anymore.”?

He only made that statement after white supremacist and republican House Majority Whip in the U.S. Congress, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, was shot in a baseball game in Alexander, Virginia, on June 14, 2017. He never had this change of heart when democratic and non-racist Rep. Gabrielle (Gabby) Giffords was shot by a right-wing paranoid schizophrenic in Phoenix, Arizona, on January 8, 2011. He even told President Barack Obama to “suck on my machine gun.”

Hence, no one should shed tears for a racist.

And so we ask again: Why should we support the regrets of untrustworthy Donald Trump supporters? Why should we sympathize with their sobs? Don’t they deserve our pity, instead of our sympathy? A handshake or nod of the head in doubtful agreement, rather than a hug or kiss on the cheek?

Moreover, because Trump—with his lucid, jellyfish soul—gives the impression he is soul-less rather than soulful—can we not assume that his supporters are as fishy as he?

An Alternative: Forgiveness
Besides, if they repented of their sin, instead of expressing remorse or regret or lament only, we could respond like priests and nuns and give them a proper reply: forgiveness. Because forgiveness implies that the penitents confessed their wrongdoing so earnestly that to deny the sincerity of the confession would be akin to a toothache.

Yet, forgiveness does not mean that we have to sympathize or even empathize with them. It only means we are willing to walk across the bridge of pardon with them, but not guarantee that the bridge won’t collapse and fall into a river of deception.

Thus, we should be so honest with ourselves that we do not give the suspicious the feeling we are dishonest with others.

The regrets expressed by Beristain and Moss, or any Trump supporter for that matter, is admirable. But to sympathize with them? I don’t think so.